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Pretty white G1, you are mine

Last summer I posted an entry “Tell me about your smartphone” where I outlined desirables in a potential smartphone. I never bought one – until this weekend. As requested, here are the details of what I ended up with.

After months of research and considerations it came down to two contenders, Nokia e71x and the HTC Dream (G1):

While I won’t jump in and say either one is perfect (there is no perfect), they both met my core requirements perfectly. I spent about three weeks being indecisive about which I would choose. The e71x is more compact and cheaper, the G1 has a form-factor I prefer and the very cool Android OS, but first gen? I played with them both, poured over comparison charts, blabbered about it in IRC with owners of each model.

When all the dust settled on Friday I headed off to an AT&T retailer to get the Nokia e71x. Due to my lack of credit they wanted a deposit of $500 for a plan (“pay as you go” is not very popular or reasonably priced in the US). Wow. I paid a $400 deposit on my Verizon phone but that was because I didn’t have many options at the time. The retailer told me that they could probably get it reduced to $350, with even the possibility of getting it waived and that they’d get back to me in 3 hours. They never called me. I could actually pay this deposit, but I skipped over to the T-Mobile store down the street to scope out my options for the G1.

The folks at the T-Mobile store were friendly and helpful, and after considering plans and all costs involved (the phone cost more, but they only wanted 1 months payment up front for a deposit and the plans were significantly cheaper for unlimited text and data) I went ahead and bought a white G1. They didn’t have the white one in stock so I’m picking it up tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to wasting hours this week playing with it, and I’m very happy with the choice. Woo, I finally will have a shiny new phone that does more than voice and text for my trip down to SELF on Friday! :)

Now to find a nice pink cover…

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